


exhale

by daymaedoo



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Depressed Lance (Voltron), Drabble, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Lance (Voltron) Needs a Hug, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Self-Harm, Suicidal Lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-24 21:37:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14364201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daymaedoo/pseuds/daymaedoo
Summary: lance is overwhelmed and stressed.basically a vent drabble.





	exhale

**Author's Note:**

> hey. uhm maybe a light trigger warning. the warnings will be in the tags if youre worried about it. also, if you havent seen dead poets society (although come on, it came out in ‘89) theres a heavy spoiler for that in here so yeah. see ya down at the bottom then i guess.
> 
> enjoy

its hard to convince yourself that you’re okay- especially when you’re in a position where you’re forced to be okay.

lance was the oldest brother in the house. he didnt have time to nurse his head every time something went wrong. no, he had to focus on the five little kids in front of him and make sure they didnt kill each other. on the days that it got particularly hard, he tried to revert to the things he enjoyed; telling stories, jokes, and singing were his main go to’s. when those didnt work, he tried keeping a journal. never one for a routine, the idea never formed into a well kept habit, so he tried to learn a new instrument- a new language. something new to take his mind off of the very tired mind-numbing familiarity that circled him day in and day out.

sure, he had “friends”. he had other students that he would sit with at at lunch (they all had full lunchboxes and treys while he had nothing but an infuser of whatever fruit blend he chose that day, of course). they would laugh as he constantly made jokes about himself. it was no longer a shock when he claimed that he wanted to die. that he would slit his wrists. that he just didnt ever want to wake up. that he’d wanted to shoot himself in the face. no, his friends were used to his antics- they’d grown used to it after the first three times he’d said it. it was nothing new- just lance being lance.

so he joked.

sometimes, he would say something slightly too on the nose, “no, id never try to od because more often than not, it doesnt work.”

“how would you know?” they’d ask

lance would stammer through a half assed excuse, clumsily smoothing over the blimp in his cool facade.

conversations that edged on too much were constantly in the back of his mind.

“ya know,” hunk said, one day after their state mandated language class. “i actually really enjoyed dead poets society.”

their teacher had made the class watch it as part of their unit on the transcendentalists. lance loved the movie- even if it did make his arms itch uncomfortably.

“yeah, me too.” lance grinned. “i really loved neil. super relatable character.” he felt the mood around him physically dampen as he re-watched the final moments of the movie in his mind’s eye. the long trek from the dark of neil’s room to his parent’s bedroom, retrieving the gun, the slow walk to the office, neil’s silhouette as he raised the gun to his temple-

“neil? didn’t he kill himself in the end?” hunk said confused. reasonably so. lance of course hadn’t dropped any hints to his current state of mind. why would he? so he laughed.

“oh yeah, youre right. wrong person.” he lied smoothly.

most of his conversations moved like that- if there was a slip up, it was taken care of- easy as pie.

at home, it was even simpler to keep his thoughts to himself.

he rarely spoke in his house, mostly because he didnt need to.

he woke up in the morning, his mother had already left the house early to make her commute to her office in the city. he left for school before his father had even gotten out of bed. he stayed after school as late as he could, talking to anyone who walked into the orchestra room where he tended to linger after the bell rang. he often would have to be told to leave school property before he finally sat in his car and gathered up the courage to head back home.

he’d pull into his garage and walk through the door, say hello to his mother, then sit in front of the computer and do his homework the best he could. then, his mother would go to bed and he would follow a few hours later, only to start the cycle over again.

there was no time to be sad. he had to be the happy-go-lucky kid everyone knew and tolerated. it was how he functioned.

but then he would have a day like this one where all he wanted to do was cry into someone’s warm embrace. he just wanted to feel someone’s arms around him as he spoke of everything that had been eating away at his sanity.

how he was a failure because he couldnt make it through a simple math class.

about how he was a disgrace because he didnt act the part of the cuban stereotype.

about how he felt like he had no one in this huge fucked up world.

about how he was afraid that everyone would move on without him, leaving him behind in the dust as they moved on to bigger and better things. 

about how, no matter how hard he tried, he couldnt fucking manage to get through the day without crying himself to sleep.

about how some days, all he wanted to do was cut himself out of his skin but he never would because the scars would give him away.

about how instead of slicing his skin, he would starve his body.

about how he stopped eating breakfast and lunch, not because he wasnt hungry, but because he couldnt find a way to keep the food down because of the dizzying thoughts in his head. 

about how he couldnt help himself from indulging in toxic stories with depressed protagonists who just want to die.

about how he just wants to die. 

but, he couldnt.

he wasnt close enough to anyone to talk about anything. 

he didnt have any real friends. he would never talk about something this deep rooted. he’d learned long ago to keep his conversations very surface with everyone, that way, they wouldnt know how fucked up he was. so, no- he would never seriously talk about his issues with any of them.

he couldnt talk to his parents. they would claim that somebody always has it worse than he does. he would never know what actual pain was. he would never begin to understand the world of mental assault that so many others had endured. he was nothing compared to them. he was nothing. he could never get therapy. he would never be diagnosed. he would never get mediation. he would never get his brain sorted out. he would never experience life the way normal people did.

he would forever experience times where his entire week was ruined because he accidentally cut off someone while he was driving.

he would forever feel like throwing up whenever he accidentally upset or disappointing someone.

he would never be able to just take a deep breath and figure out the problem at hand because his mind never slowed down long enough for that to happen, so no. he would never tell his parents.

so he constantly found himself in the incognito tab of his chrome browser, searching for “what to do when you feel really depressed but you dont talk to anyone and you cant talk to anyone about it” and “indicators of depression” and “how to properly write a suicide note”.

he learned that he needed therapy (whoop-de-fucking-doo), checked out for six out of the nine early indicators of major depressive disorder, and, unfortunately, there was no set template for a suicide note. 

every one of these searches usually ends with him trying and failing to draft out a suicide note, the tears blurring the words together until, eventually, he gives up, calls it a day, and heads to his room to stare up at his ceiling for hours until his alarm goes off and its time to start the day anew. 

maybe something will be different, he used to tell himself.

now, he knows that every single day will feel like this maze, like this labyrinth that he could never escape. every day it coils deeper, weaving itself intricately within the thorns of his mind. the halls keep getting tighter and tighter, suffocating him from the inside out.

one day, lance will die in this labyrinth. 

he knows it.

**Author's Note:**

> alright so,
> 
> theres that. lowercase intended haha
> 
> this was stupid haha sorry. hope you enjoyed it at least a little. 
> 
> follow my tumblr:  
> langstexmachina.tumblr.com
> 
> \- day


End file.
